Lonely life of a whistleblower

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For the past year, Dr Rost, a vice-president for marketing at
Pfizer with a history of corporate whistleblowing, has publicly
criticised the industry for the price of drugs. Along the way, he
has become increasingly isolated at Pfizer, the world's largest
drug company.

First, his staff stopped reporting to him. Then his supervisors
stopped returning his calls and now he does not know whom he
reports to. His secretary left, he said, and he was moved to an
office near Pfizer's security department at a company building in
Peapack, New Jersey.

The latest blow came last Monday, the morning after Dr Rost, 46,
appeared on CBS's 60 Minutes about drug prices - a follow-up
to his news conference on the subject last year with members of
Congress and to the opinion pieces he has written for The New
York Times and other newspapers. Ready, as always, to put in a
full day at the office, Dr Rost turned on his computer on Monday
and tried for the first time in almost two weeks to log into his
Pfizer email account. Access denied.

Because his company mobile phone also was suddenly not working,
Rost was reduced to emailing reporters from his Hotmail account to
report his electronic exile.

"This is like being in some kind of corporate twilight zone," Dr
Rost said on Tuesday. "I guess everybody's waiting for me to get
fired."

Paul Fitzgerald, a spokesman for Pfizer, said the company had
not deliberately disconnected Dr Rost's email and phone service.
"There have been cases, through a change of vendor, where some
employees have lost service for a period of time," Mr Fitzgerald
said.

Beyond that, Mr Fitzgerald said that he could not comment on Dr
Rost's work at Pfizer.

But he said Pfizer had not changed Dr Rost's responsibilities
since April 2003, when it bought Pharmacia & Upjohn, where Dr
Rost formerly worked. At the time, he ran the marketing of the
growth hormone genotropin.

Mr Fitzgerald described Dr Rost's new office as nice, a
description Dr Rost did not dispute. "He does still work at
Pfizer," Mr Fitzgerald said. "We continue to employ him."

By Tuesday afternoon, following a reporter's inquiries, Dr Rost
reported that his email account was working again. "Now I'm going
to check if I can actually get in and get the name of my
supervisor," he wrote in an email message. "That should be
fun."

Dr Rost came to public attention last August, after he wrote a
positive review on Amazon.com of a book critical of the drug
industry. The next month, at a news conference, he called for
legislation to be passed allowing the importation of low-priced
drugs from other countries. "Every day we delay, Americans die
because they cannot afford drugs," he said.

Pfizer responded by saying: "Dr Rost has no qualifications to
speak on importation."

Management specialists said that Pfizer and Dr Rost had
irreconcilable differences.

"In defence of Pfizer, I don't think I would want him
representing me in the marketplace," said John Putzier, president
of FirStep, a human resources consulting firm.

Dr Rost's comments were not in Pfizer's interests, Mr Putzier
said. As a result, it may be legal for Pfizer to fire Dr Rost. But
firing him might make Pfizer appear vindictive, he added.

Dr Rost may have additional protection against being fired. In
its most recent annual report, Pfizer disclosed that the Justice
Department had opened an investigation into its marketing of
genotropin, the growth hormone Dr Rost was responsible for selling
at Pharmacia.

Dr Rost said he could not confirm or deny whether he was
involved in that inquiry. But if he is, he may be protected by
federal laws shielding whistleblowers.

Mr Fitzgerald declined to comment on the investigation. Pfizer
is "really between a rock and a hard place", Mr Putzier said. "He's
a loose cannon but he's a strategic loose cannon."

Pfizer became Dr Rost's employer when it bought Pharmacia in
2002 for $US63 million ($82 million). Dr Rost had worked at Wyeth,
another drug maker, until 2001, the year he sued Wyeth in the New
Jersey state court, alleging that the company had retaliated
against him after he uncovered its practice of underpaying taxes to
foreign governments. Rost and Wyeth settled in December 2003; terms
were not disclosed.

Susan Annunzio, chief executive of the Hudson Highland Centre
for High Performance, a management consulting firm in Chicago, said
Pfizer had evidently decided that firing Dr Rost would cause more
problems than it would solve. "They don't want bad publicity," she
said, "they want to get the person to leave on his own."

Dr Rost said he did not enjoy being unable to work productively
but could not quit without another job to replace his current
annual salary package of more than $600,000. "I have a family to
support. There haven't been that many job offers coming through
lately," Dr Rost said. "In another year, I'll be fully vested in
the pension plan."